Agency has terminated its proceedings of the assessment of the Amendment to the restructuring plan of the undertaking Brodograđevna industrija Split (Brodosplit)

Agency has terminated its proceedings of the assessment of the Amendment to the restructuring plan of the undertaking Brodograđevna industrija Split (Brodosplit) because there are no legal preconditions for its further duration due to the fact that the part of the Accession Treaty referring to the shipbuilding area applies as from the date of its signing and that the European Commission has already adopted its decision.

Namely, although the Treaty on the Accession the Republic of Croatia to the European Union enters into force on 1 July 2013, Article 3 (5) thereof stipulates that regardless of the entry into force, part of the Treaty regulating commitments undertaken by Croatia during the accession negotiations, including those in the area of competition i.e. the restructuring of the shipbuilding industry, applies as from the date of the signing of the Treaty i.e. 9 December 2011.

This entails close monitoring by the European Commission of all the commitments that need to be fulfilled prior to or by the date of the accession. In this case, in the area of restructuring of Croatian shipbuilding industry, European Commission controls the amount of own contribution which must not contain state aid and must be up to 40 per cent of the total restructuring costs, decrease of total production capacity of the undertaking, its total annual production and other measures defined in the restructuring plan of the individual shipyard. Also, all subsequent changes in the shipyards restructuring plans are to be submitted to the European Commission for the acceptance.

Due to the fact that in the period after the approval of Brodosplit’s restructuring plan the additional losses have been accumulated, which had an impact on the increase of the total restructuring costs, which then led to the change in the amounts of own contribution and state aid and thus in the above mentioned commitments stemming from the Treaty, the undertaking DIV d.o.o. prepared and delivered to the Ministry of Economy the Amendment to the restructuring plan of the undertaking Brodograđevna industrija Split. The Amendment was submitted both to the European Commission and to the Agency for the acceptance.

European Commission approved the Amendment on 16 August 2012, while the Council of the Agency decided on its session held on 30 August that further handling of the proceedings of the assessment of the Amendment to the restructuring plan is inappropriate and ineffective, or, in other words, that there are no legal preconditions for further handling of the proceedings.